January 2016 Update - Holy Mukay!

Mr. ORLY finally has a name! And we get our first early idea of the conversation animation style.

Plus three concept art paintings (albeit small thumbnails) give us an idea of the planet landing experience and I am not disappointed with the visual style being shown. Pretty much exactly what I had imagined.

It looks like the horizon of the planets is very curved as opposed to flat, so planetary size is in line with what we've already been shown, meaning the planets remain small in scale. Transitions between day and night appear to be teased as well! I love how the desert turns dark with a green "aurora" effect very similar to the green nebula in the background wallpaper here on the forum.

There was some talk recently of being able to traverse bodies of water in the lander; it appears it was obviously already under consideration! The image of the lander flying over the water like a hydrofoil reminds me very much of the shot of the Millenium Falcon at the very end of Force Awakens skimming just over the surface of the water. I also love how the sun burns large and bright on the horizon and reinforces the sense that we are really orbiting a particular star rather than just having a top down view of the lander without any context of where we are in the star system itself. Nice.

I have to wonder now about being able to go fully submersible and dive down for some deep ocean explorations ...